After a rainy, heavily disrupted Sunday morning qualifying session which featured five red flags, McLaren Racing’s Lando Norris will start the São Paulo Grand Prix race from pole position, ahead of Mercedes’ George Russell who starts P2 and Visa Cash App RB’s Yuki Tsunoda in P3.
Norris, who won Saturday’s sprint race, enjoyed a strong performance in the final qualifying session, ultimately securing pole position with a time of 1:23.405. However, despite surging to the top of the timesheet in both Q2 and Q3, the British driver was lucky to make it out of Q1, finishing P15 with a fastest time of only 1:30.944.
While speaking after qualifying, Norris stated that he was “super happy” to have qualified on pole, admitting that he had been “struggling a lot” and had not felt comfortable at the beginning of the session.
“There was a lot going on today, but super, super happy. I was struggling a lot at the beginning of qualifying. I had a lot of work to do… so I was not comfortable at all.”
He stated that he had worked to improve his performance throughout qualifying and claimed that this had helped him to ultimately make it through the qualifying sessions to secure pole position.
“So, to end up on pole… I worked on it a lot through qualifying. [I had] a lot of areas I need to improve on, but I did exactly that.”
He added that while he was “a little surprised” to be on pole, he felt as if had had some “nice laps” and deemed his good qualifying position “a good result” for his team.
“A little surprised again. I mean, I’ve been surprised a little bit lately, a little bit surprised to be on pole, but some nice laps.
“I felt good in the end and a good result for us.”
When asked about the difficult conditions and how difficult it could be “to find the limit” of performance in such conditions, Norris replied, “Very. Probably more than it looks on TV at times.”
He stated that drivers were “always trying to find that next little bit” but highlighted how the poor weather conditions had made that tricky for several drivers who had crashed out or otherwise struggled to complete their laps.
“It’s just… you are always trying to find that next little bit, but I mean, you saw how many people were going off and crashing and locking up.
“So, it was easy to end up badly, you know, and end up in a wall or do something where you might not even make the race later today, you know.”
He said that he had found it “very tough” to know how much to “push” during the laps, especially in Q1, as it had not been easy to determine the trade-off between risk and reward, and added that he was relieved to have done so successfully.
“So that risk-reward was not easy today, especially from where I was in Q1. I found it very tough to know how much more can I push.
“So that’s why I’m happy [because] it’s relieving qualifying after something like this. So very happy at the same time.”
Norris was also asked about the implications of him starting pole position on the title fight between himself and Red Bull Racing’s Max Verstappen who, after qualifying P12, is expected to start the race from P17 due to the five-place grid penalty that he will take for an engine change with sees him exceed his internal combustion engine (ICE) allocation.
Norris denied having “eyes forward” on the championship, as he expected the race to be challenging, especially due to the wet conditions and the challenge posed by other drivers such as Russell and Tsunoda.
“Not eyes forward, I mean, I got some quick guys behind. George put in a nice lap. Yuki’s been flying in the wet all day.
“So, it’s never easy in these conditions. It’s never as much as just settling down and getting on with it as that is what I would like to do.”
While the McLaren driver claimed that he did not expect the race to be “the easiest thing” due to the weather, he stated that he and his team would “prepare well” for the race. He added that he was excited to see what he could see, regardless of the conditions.
“It’s not the easiest thing, you know so we’ll see. We’ll prepare well.
“[I] hope we can get a race in. That will be a good start and [I’m] excited to see what we can do.”
